Essential tips for presentations that inspire and engage

Whether it is pitching a business plan to potential investors or delivering a bold cost-cutting strategy to the leadership team, most finance professionals are inevitably called upon to present and communicate key information.

Yet, all too often, finance and accounting professionals are perceived as speaking an “exclusive” language that can confuse or isolate their audience, said Bradley Channer, FCMA, CGMA, the CFO at UBIO, an automation technology company based in the UK. By using technical jargon and failing to put numbers into perspective, for instance, finance professionals can quickly lose the attention and interest of their audience — and the buy-in required to inspire action.

“In any presentation, the most important aspect is to be able to communicate the financial message to the founder, CEO, investors, etc., in a human way that they can easily understand and care about,” Channer explained. “The first step is to put yourself in their shoes, forget that you are an accountant, and really consider what your audience needs to know.”

Such careful and methodical consideration tends to be a rarity in most presentations, noted Richard Mulholland, founder and chief presentation officer at Missing Link, a company based in South Africa that specialises in helping presenters engage and activate audiences.

“When you consider just how high the stakes are when delivering business presentations, it’s surprising that the bar in this skill is as low as it is,” he added.

FM magazine spoke to Channer and Mulholland to find out how finance professionals can immediately raise the bar and deliver more engaging presentations. Their advice includes the following steps:

Focus on structure

According to Mulholland, a well-structured, poorly skilled presenter will always outperform a poorly structured, highly skilled presenter. “Structure is critical. So when improving on presentation skills, we need to solve for what you say before we solve for how you say it.”

He outlined four key elements around which to build an impactful presentation:

Give your audience a reason to care. Open with clarity and curiosity: This is what we’re talking about, and this is the question we’re trying to answer. “With every bit of information you present, the audience should be trying to solve for your hypothesis themselves,” Mulholland said.

Give your audience a reason to believe. Why should they trust you? What evidence do you have? For example, emphasise the rigour and depth of the research and data you’re presenting.

Tell them what they need to know. When compiling the information you will present, ask yourself: When I have finished this presentation, what emotion do I want my audience to feel? For example, if you are a CFO delivering a presentation on cost-cutting, the audience needs to feel a degree of fear or anxiety, which in turn will inspire certain actions. Alternatively, if you want to deliver a presentation that builds momentum and motivation, you’ve got to create a sense of pride and excitement. In each scenario, one must ask: What information do I have to show that will evoke these emotions?

Tell them what they need to do. Every presentation should end with an explicit call to action, Mulholland noted. “If there is no call to action at the end of a presentation, then it is a report and should rather be sent via email,” he said. For instance, if the presentation was centred on cost-cutting, then what are the small steps that the audience can immediately begin taking to achieve the desired result?

Make it visual

When structuring your presentation, Channer noted that finance professionals tend to use too much text and present with overcrowded PowerPoint slides that distract the audience.

“Wherever possible, turn your information into colourful graphs and pictures, making it as visual as you can,” he said. “Be prepared with the detail, but present the minimum facts required to deliver your message. Brevity is always key.”

If you are presenting online, Mulholland recommended using interactive content to hold attention — bearing in mind that online audiences are likely being distracted by a steady stream of notifications via email, messaging apps, social media sites, etc.

“You need to go into online presentations with the assumption that you are losing your audience to these distractions every two to three minutes, so make sure to give them a reason to return every several minutes,” he explained. “For example, insert a quick poll into the presentation which evokes curiosity and gets your audience to participate.”

To build highly visual, interactive, and compelling presentations for an online audience, Mulholland recommends Prezi Video — a video creation tool that puts you right alongside your content as you livestream or record. He also highlighted PowerPoint’s new feature called cameo, which allows you to embed your live video camera feed directly into PowerPoint slides to create a more immersive experience. You can then apply the same effects to your camera feed as you can to a picture or other object, including formatting, transitions, and styles.

Put the numbers into perspective

When presenting data, Mulholland said that the key to having greater impact is narrowing your datasets and only using the numbers you need to deliver the message you want to deliver. When presenting these numbers, always put them into perspective for your audience. “This is a critical step which we call ‘making your numbers human scale’, and which allows your numbers to exist in a form that the audience can understand and actually care about.”

Tame your inner critic

Public speaking and presenting are often daunting prospects for finance professionals, and are things not usually practised. Having trained as a professional actor, Channer said that professionals can gain confidence by learning to consciously tame the inner critic — that small but persistent voice that says you can’t do it.

“You never beat the critic, but you can learn how to control it and vanquish the all-too-common impostor syndrome,” he said. “This takes moment-to-moment awareness and consciously affirming to yourself that you are more than equipped for the task.”

Channer noted that confidence is also gained by practising your presentation several times beforehand, usually away from your normal workplace. While practising, envision different scenarios and try to think of any difficult or confrontational questions that your audience might pose. By practising while out on a walk or in the gym, your brain will be inspired to problem-solve in a different way.

Importantly, gaining more confidence in presentation skills can empower finance professionals to be more assertive and direct in other aspects of their work, Channer noted.

“Mastering this skill can give you the ability to say what you really feel in the boardroom and to stand your ground when it matters the most,” he said.

Jessica Hubbard is a freelance writer based in the UK. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Oliver Rowe at Oliver.Rowe@aicpa-cima.com.

LEARNING RESOURCES

MBAexpress: Presenting Financial Information — V 2.0

This course discusses the basic steps to developing a process that effectively delivers numbers-oriented information to non-financial audiences.

COURSE

Financial Storytelling: The Key in Growing Your Organization to the Next Level

Bring financial information to life and use it to communicate a story to an audience, through a mix of financial data, visualisation, storytelling theory, best practice, and practical application.

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RESOURCE

Podcast episode

“Serious Presentation Tips From a Stand-up Comic”, Journal of Accountancy, 7 October 2019